The present invention relates generally to the field of methods for coloring a substrate and creating a water color or tie-dye effect on the substrate and subsequent use in a greeting card or other product.
A colorant, or the substance used to give color to the ink, is either dye or pigmentation. The colorant, consisting of molecules or small particles, blends with a carrier-based solution or suspension. A carrier-dye based ink tints or stains the substrate on a molecular level and gives color to the substrate by virtue of differential absorption or reflection of some region or regions of the visible electromagnetic radiation spectrum of light.
Chromatography is an analytical process for separating mixtures containing substances which may or may not be colored. In the chromatographic process, the substances in a mixture move by intentional displacement of a mobile phase in a defined direction through a stationary phase which separates one molecular substance from other molecules in a mixture. Chromatography exploits the differences in partitioning behavior between a mobile phase (solvent) and a stationary phase to separate the components in a mixture. Components of a mixture may be chemically or physically interacting with the mobile and stationary phases based on charge, molecular size, molecular polarity, hydrogen bonding, relative solubility or adsorption.
Watercolor art often requires repeated sequential applications of wet colorant to substrate interspersed with time periods of drying. The watercolor is applied to a position using a brush. Effort is taken to prevent the color from running. Young children and people with handicaps have a difficult time using a brush and keeping the colors from bleeding.
It should be appreciated that this invention, methods, and processes would work equally well with ‘dyes’ and ‘inks’ that are not initially visible to the eye, e.g. ‘invisible inks’, that are revealed only after a secondary treatment such as short wave ultraviolet irradiation, heating, or chemical treatment, or a combination thereof, in which a chemical or photochemical process takes place to produce the colored regions of the substantially wicking substrate.